Sales Development 12 Comments

Why Mastering Sales Development Takes More Than 15 Months

SDRs: it’s time to get real about what is going on in the world of sales development. Despite investing a lot of time and money into building out sales development teams, companies are failing to get their teams off the ground and losing the ability to build sufficient pipelines.

According to The Bridge Group, the average tenure of an SDR is 1.4 years. This is down from nearly 2.2 years in 2014. For the first time in the history of this report, SDRs are being hired with less experience than ever: today’s SDRs have fewer than two years of experience, with an average of 1.3 years.

That’s a major change in the sales hierarchy. You are being promoted out of the SDR role much faster than any in the role before you. You are also being hired with significantly less experience. This seems like a great thing for SDRs; however, this practice causes speed bumps for teams as they try to scale their sales and marketing efforts.

The SDR role is one of the most important, if not themost important, role in any organization. You are vital to the success and growth of the company. With that, you need to make sure you take time to master the position. That takes longer than 1.4 years.

You’re just not ready. Seriously; just be patient. I know that is tough to hear, but let me reason with you on this.

Set Yourself Up for Long Term Success

SDRs who are promoted too quickly have not built the necessary skills to be successful at the next stage of their careers. As a result, SDRs don’t just fail to excel – they sometimes deliver less-than-average performances.

Sales development is a craft you will use throughout the rest of your career, regardless of the roles you find yourself in. However, there are also skills you need that go beyond pure prospecting. SDRs need to master time management and business acumen, develop strong written and verbal skills and understand the fundamentals of their next role before moving on.

Additionally, the sales development role exposes you to many different parts of a business. SDRs sit at the center of the business between marketing and sales. SDRs also serve as the first salespeople to test new messaging, and they should gain a firm understanding of successful customers. This makes the promotion track more than just a linear sales path, giving you more options as you better learn the business.

Set Yourself Up for Short-Term Success

Another reason you’re likely not ready is that you do not have a replacement. Hopefully you are being promoted as a sales development representative to an account executive role because you are the top performer.

A good rule of thumb is that you should only move up once the AEs have about 80% of the calendar filled with meetings or demos. If this happens too soon, you will be promoted and struggle to find a way to fill your pipeline and your company may have fewer appointments or opportunities being created because the top SDR moved up. Timing a promotion is everything, and understanding that helping the ramp of the other SDRs will only make your short-term success more likely.

Moving from SDR to AE takes more than just patience; it takes dedication to thoroughly learning the craft of sales development. With highly developed sales skills, a newly minted AE not only makes it easier to close deals; he makes it easier to teach other new SDRs how to develop the best habits and to be successful.

The path to promotion is different for every company, and as an SDR, you need to sit down with your manager to discuss what it will look like for you. However, before you get too ahead of yourself on taking the next step, learn the ropes and take every bit of knowledge you can out of the role. It is easy to think about the immediate impact that a change will have for you, but when you sincerely consider the long-term vision, you might think differently.

About the author

Phill Keene is Director of Marketing at Octiv and co-host of #RealSalesTalk podcast. Through his experience as a sales professional, he has learned how to be a strategic resource to companies trying to reach their revenue goals and attain quota. Phill brings commitment to learning and development to the inside sales space, and was named one of 2017’s Top 25 Most Influential Inside Sales Professionals by AA-ISP. His expertise is in best practices around sales productivity, marketing, lead generation, business development and technology.